very stiff brake pedal

daveharnett

My car (96 1.6 golf) has an unusually stiff brake pedal. It's passed the nct no problem, and changing the discs has made no significant difference.

It's never caused a problem, and i am acccustomed to it. However, when i tested it (calm down; an empty, closed car park) i had to push down VERY hard to engage the abs at 80kph on damp/wet tarmac.

What's the cause of this?
Is it something i should be worried about?

Ferris

I drive a Mk4 Golf diesel and I had a very similar problem. I had to nearly push the pedal through the floor to get the ABS to kick in. This was because I was getting no servo assistance on the braking. The servo is powered by a vacuum pipe which runs to the inlet manifold on a petrol or a vacuum pump connected to the camshaft on a diesel. In a left hand drive golf golf this pipe is short. In a RHD golf, however, VW took the cheap option and just lenghtened the hose to the driving position on the other side of the car.

Anyway on my car this hose had split and so there was no vacuum to the servo so no assistance to the steering.

OK, now for the serious bit, you need to get this fixed quickly. In the worst case is that you have to brake on a dry road from say motorway speeds, it will take your car a significantly longer distance to stop than other cars. This happened to me and I had to make a dive for the central reservation in order to avoid rear ending some punter on the M50.

Crap brakes is a common problem with MK3's anyway so a decent mechanic should be able to fix it cheaply enough.

Hope this helps.

daveharnett

Thanks ferris. Good to know